Articles

A problem of distribution

Soil and yield testing showed shocking shortfalls in the back halves of paddocks

By Daniel Olson

So, I was sitting in my sister’s living room, admiring the newly purchased aerial photograph of their property. Their place is next to ours, so the main farm is also in the picture. You could clearly see the chicken tractors across the road, the junk pile we hide behind the barn, and the new building project.

But what really stood out were the different shades of green within our paddocks. As I looked closer, I could see that the darkest grass was always closest to the paddock gates, and it consistently lightened in direct proportion to the distance from those gates.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, and I guess I always knew that our highest productivity was toward the front of our paddocks. I decided to do some research this past summer.

Thank you for visiting the Graze magazine website. We offer a few sample articles online, but to see the full content, order a subscription of the print magazine or order the specific back issue you are interested in. This article appeared in the December 2016 issue of Graze.